


Dumb AU in which Shuichi Saihara goes to a summer camp every year

by lucky_feather



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Summer Camp, Author Is A Clown, Gen, Musical References, Ouma not Oma, Stupid teenagers being stupid teenagers, and im wearing my chb shirt, because im a theatre kid uwu, i have a stack of them next to me right now, i listened to spongebob the musical while writing the first chapter, my writing style was heavily influenced by the percy jackson books, theyre like 15 in this, very close friendships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:48:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24671068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucky_feather/pseuds/lucky_feather
Summary: I stepped out of the car after an uncomfortably long drive. I stretched, so glad that we were finally off the road. The familiar scent of pine and trees hit me. It brought back so many memories of each year at camp. One week in this place every summer, ever since I was 8.~~~I had the sudden idea to write this story while on a walk, so here we are now. Basically, it's what the title says. Some of these are based on my actual experiences with going to camps so if you recognize anything here you may or may not know me.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	1. Camp Hope's Piss

**Author's Note:**

> keep in mind these characters are NOT MINE theyre spike chunsofts i do not claim them

I stepped out of the car after an uncomfortably long drive. I stretched, so glad that we were finally off the road. The familiar scent of pine and trees hit me. It brought back so many memories of each year at camp. One week in this place every summer, ever since I was 8. 

Camp Hope’s Peak, or as many of the returning campers called it: Camp Hope’s Piss. It was an old summer camp in the woods, with cabins that have serious ant and bug problems, an extremely cold pool, and a playground (for some reason). Anyway, I should probably introduce myself.

My name is Shuichi Saihara, I like sleuthing, detective work, books, and a lot of other things that would probably get me called “weird” or “boring”. I think I’m lucky to even have friends, even though they sorta forced themselves into my life. I still love them, though. They help me to work on my social life destroying anxiety.

“Hey, kid. You gonna stop standin’ there and get your stuff from the trunk? I gotta get on the road soon,” my uncle called to me from the car.

“Ah- oh, y-yeah. Sure, sorry,” I stammered back. I wished I could respond without stumbling on my words, but prior interactions, as well as this one, have proved that to be impossible. 

“S’no problem.”

I went around to the back of the car, opening the trunk and grabbing my luggage: a sleeping bag inside a garbage bag with “SAIHARA” very poorly sharpied on, a suitcase full of clothes, and a backpack for anything extra. It was a lot, but I got used to carrying it all up to whatever cabin I was staying in every year.

“HEY SIDEKICK! You need help? I already took my stuff inside the cabin,” Someone called from behind me. I recognized that voice! I turned around and smiled at my best friend, Kaito Momota. He was smiling back, although much brighter than I was. He’d always been that way, bright like the stars; which made sense, since he wanted to be an astronaut. He was dressed in some graphic tee and the same khakis he wore on the first day every year. I was convinced he had a dresser full of them in different sizes. To top it off, socks and sandals, because his fashion sense was even worse than mine. I couldn’t fault him for that, though.

“Uh, sure. Could you carry my sleeping bag?” I asked. He nodded, so I handed it over to him. I always hated carrying my sleeping bag, so whenever I had the chance not to, I’d take it. 

We climbed down the slope to get to the cabins, stepping on lots of pine needles and grasses. Possibly bugs too. Not that the camp needed any more of those. We’d agree to never tell Gonta Gokuhara.

“Alright, we’re rooming together in the Owl cabin this year. Isn’t that cool!” Kaito exclaimed as we set foot in the old wooden building. It was fairly big, with a common room separating two hallways, with 4 rooms each, and a bathroom on each end. The bathrooms originally had gendered signs, but no one actually paid attention to those, so they eventually went away.

“Yeah, that does sound kinda cool,” I chuckled. 

“Uh-huh. Although, you’re not gonna like who we’re next to.”

I was a bit confused at that. He led me into the hall on the left. The first door had a piece of paper with “SAIHARA & MOMOTA” on it. I opened the door and was greeted with the familiarity of the cabin rooms. The cream colored walls, rough burgundy carpet, and rickety bunk beds. They could’ve fit 4 people into one room, but they always left a bed for each person to put their extra items on. I threw my backpack onto the top bunk after dropping my suitcase on the ground. Kaito tossed my sleeping bag onto the bottom bunk. He knew I preferred to sleep below, since we’d shared a room many times before. The counsellors chose who you roomed with, so they would usually put me and Kaito together, since he was one of the only people I was really comfortable with.

I decided to figure out why I wouldn’t like who we’re next to. I left my temporary room and went over to the next door over, which was closed. Oh. That’s why.

“AMAMI & OUMA”

I was okay with Rantaro Amami. He was a little weird, and kinda scared me, but I didn’t mind being in a room next to him. Besides, he had cool hair. The part I had a problem with was Kokichi Ouma. He was an interesting individual.

He enjoyed pulling pranks on the other campers, like putting party snaps under a toilet seat, scaring the literal shit out of Miu Iruma. Worst of all, he had a very strange obsession with me. Luckily, that made me a rare target for his pranks, but I was still very wary. 

Everyone at camp felt some sort of negative emotion towards Kokichi Ouma, and rightfully so. 

I went back to my room with my mouth in a tight line. 

“So, you saw the sign?” Kaito asked. I sucked in air through my teeth and nodded. “I know, right?” 

“Yeah. I..I think we’ll be fine though. At least neither of us are rooming with him.” I tried to look on the bright side. Kaito seemed to brighten up at that.

“Let’s go see who’s across from us!” He suggested, pulling me out the door and across the mini common room.

We entered the other hallway and came across an open door, with one of my other close friends, Kaede Akamatsu, inside. She was on her phone, but seemed to notice our presence and look up at us. She smiled brightly.

“Hey guys, it's great to see you! I was just texting Maki, since she’s my roommate this year.” Kaede pointed to the sign taped to the door, “She says she’ll be here soon.”

“Awesome! Can’t wait to get the gang back together!” Kaito cheered, pumping a fist into the air. I laughed a bit at his over enthusiasm.

“How about we all head to the lodge and make our name tags?” Kaede suggested. I always liked the name tag making part of camp, and I kept mine every year, even though it was one of the first things we did.

“I dunno, doesn’t everyone already know each other?” wondered Kaito, scratching his goatee.

“Actually, I, uh, heard there was going to be a few new people here this year,” I chimed in.

“Oh, that’s cool.”

“Now, come on, let’s go!” Kaede announced, standing up and putting her hands on her hips all leader-like. 

We trekked up to the lodge, which was where meals and meetings were held, but was also just a general hang out place. Every year there was a puzzle, which would be half complete the day before we would leave, but would somehow be completed the next morning. It was a very odd happening, and some people came up with legends surrounding it to scare the more, er, gullible campers.

We reached the doors. They had windows, but since Kaede and Kaito were in front of me, I couldn’t see who was inside. Kaede swung open one of them, announcing our presence. I peeked over at the table we made name tags on, trying to see if there was room to sit, which was a decision I would later regret. 

“OMIGOD!” the dreaded voice shouted. “SHUUIIIIICHI!”

I winced and gave a weak smile to the source. He was waving his hands high in the air, one holding a name tag with his name on it written in neon yellow-green highlighter. Everything about him was loud, including the gaudy, bright pink tank top he had on. I felt blinded even looking in his direction. 

“SHUICHI! I NEED YOUR OPINION ON SOMETHING!” Kokichi shrieked. I looked around me, at Kiibo — who had his back turned to me, desperately trying to finish his name tag — and then back at the demon. 

“What is it?” I asked, trying to maintain a pleasant attitude, although I knew my smile was awkwardly crooked.

“Come’re, come’re. I’ll show you.” He aggressively fanned with his hand towards himself, which I assumed was his way of calling me over. Kaito looked at me worryingly, like ‘dude, are you really doing this?’. Well, yeah. Unfortunately.

I awkwardly stood next to Kokichi.

“Okay okay okay SO, I’m not finished yet, BUT! I need you to help me figure out what color string I should use!” Oh, this would be easy. I’d just pick one and move along. “Soooo, pink, or purple?” 

I thought about it. What would look best? Pink might balance the colors out, because it was lighter and went with his shirt, but purple would go better with the yellow-greenish highlighter color. What to choose, what to choose, what t-

_SNAP._

“HEY! Are you going to answer me?!” the purple haired boy questioned. Ah, I’d been spacing out.

“Uhm, pink is nice,” I said, trying to save myself. 

“Ooooh, you are SO right, Shuichi!” he concluded. Kokichi proceeded to poorly hole punch his name tag (without even laminating it) and strung some string through. “Bye bye, now!” he said, prancing off to go torment someone else. 

I stayed standing there for a moment, before slowly sitting down in the seat he was previously in, getting to work on my name tag. Kiibo left, and Kaito and Kaede joined me soon after.

“So, how’s everything been for you guys?” Kaede asked, striking up a casual conversation. That seemed to be her specialty.

“It’s been great! My grandparents are saying that they might be able to get me into an astronaut training program when I’m an adult! Isn’t that cool?” Kaito exclaimed. His love for space had somehow remained past his childhood, which I was a bit envious about. I didn’t really have anything I liked as a kid that remained, except books, but I couldn’t really give out fun facts about them without spoiling the story. And I don't think they would like to know several ways to kill someone with a toothbrush, so I let them lead the conversation.

“That’s amazing, Kaito!” Kaede said, with that little twinkle in her eye she gets when she’s truly happy about something. “I’m going to be in a concert in a couple months, so I guess we both have something to look forward to.”

“Hell yeah! It’s gonna be so awesome,” Kaito cheered, holding out his hand to high five the pianist, which she accepted.

“Yeah!” Kaede laughed, but then gasped and looked over to me. “Shuichi, we haven’t asked about you yet, I’m so sorry!” I took a moment of silence in processing, since I didn’t expect to be brought into the conversation.

“Oh, uh. I don’t really have much planned, but I think I might be getting some new books soon.” I attempted to match their enthusiasm, which didn’t really work. I wished I could, but I wasn’t exactly an extrovert.

“Hey, that’s pretty cool, man.” Kaito gave me an encouraging smile, and so did Kaede. I felt calmer at that moment. “I don’t really like books but, y’know, I bet it’s a lot of fun when you get a new one. Like how I feel when I get to tell people about space!” I laughed softly. “Like, did you know neutron stars can spin 600 times per second?” 

“No way!” Kaede gawked. 

“Yeah way!” as he began to list off more space facts, I noticed Maki Harukawa, Kaede’s roommate this year, entering quietly. We made eye contact, and she put a finger to her lips. What was she going to do?

She silently made her way towards the table, standing behind Kaito and Kaede, who hadn’t noticed her. 

“-And we still don’t know how many stars are in space!”

“That’s cool.” 

Kaito shrieked, Kaede jumped. 

“Am I that scary?” Maki mused.

“When you sneak up behind people, yes!” Kaito still looked shaken from her “scare”.

“Sure.” Maki walked around the table, sat next to me in the last remaining seat, grabbed a red sharpie and a flash card from the stack, scribbled her name, and began to laminate it.

“You’re not gonna do anything cool this year?!” Kaito complained. 

Maki sighed.“No. I just want to get it done with. You guys are also almost finished, and I don’t want to take up time.”

“That’s fine. So how’ve you been, Maki?” Kaede asked, trying to keep the conversation bright.

“Decent enough,” She answered monotonously, already hole punching her tag.

“Hey, can I have the hole puncher after you? I’m almost done,” I said, finishing my laminating. I hoped I wasn’t interrupting. I was close to being done, since mine was just my name written in loopy blue letters, with some dots underlining it. Not too complicated, but not too simple, as I liked it.

“Knock yourself out.” She dropped it on top of my name tag, and I got to work. 

“Damn, you two are always so quick with making those!” Kaito noticed, trying to finish his.

“I agree. I like to be super creative with mine, so it’s kinda weird when I see people with really plain ones. No offense to Tsumugi, by the way,” Kaede added.

We continued to make idle talk, finishing up our name tags. We found out that Maki had gone up a belt in her martial arts class, and also gotten a job as a babysitter for some upper-class family. She said she only did it because she was okay with kids and it was good money, but I knew that she was better than “okay” with kids. From the stories I’d heard (and also from her being the one person who could wrangle Kokichi out of doing stupid things), she was _really_ good with them. 

“Alright, what do you guys think?” Kaito showed off his name tag to us. Instead of his name being written in marker, it was outlined and colored around, with stars drawn in silver. 

“That looks great, Kaito.” I gave him a thumbs up.

“Yeah, it’s super cool!” Kaede chimed.

Maki gave a nod of approval. 

“How about mine?” Kaede asked, putting hers on to show off her name written in elegant cursive, showing music notes around it. “The sheet music is actually Clair De Lune, by the way.” That was one of her favorite songs. I had to admit, it got me pretty emotional when I heard it for the first time. 

“I like it! It’s awesome that you show off your talent, Kaede!” 

“Yeah, I can’t wait for tomorrow morning. I’m gonna play the piano before breakfast for everyone!” Her plum-hued eyes glimmered in excitement. “Sooo, what should we do now? I want to go swimming but the pool’s not gonna be open for another few hours.” 

“How about we check out what kind of activities there’ll be this year?” I suggested.

“Sounds good to me.” Maki agreed.

Kaito nodded “Same here.”

“Alright then, let’s go!” 


	2. Shuichi Vibes So Hard He Falls Asleep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> basically shuichi cares about his friends a lot

The four of us entered the more open area of the lodge, connected to the entrance room, with several round tables and doors that led out to a balcony type area that wrapped around part of it. There were a lot of groups of people conversing in the room, all in their own groups that they’d been around for years. I noticed some of the older campers, who I was always kind of intimidated by. Especially that one guy with the hair that looked like clouds. He was weird. 

There were also a lot of much younger campers, too. They all stayed in a cabin specifically for them, since they were still pretty young. I remember having to stay in that cabin. The walls were paper-thin, and you could hear every little footstep throughout it, which was not very fun when a large group of them came back from some nighttime activity. 

“I wonder if they’ll have table tennis again.” Kaito wondered aloud, “I got my ass beat by Ryoma in the finals last year, but it was still pretty fun.” 

We reached the table for activities, and looked at what we had in store.

“Cornhole competition, capture the flag, and table tennis competition,” Kaede began to read them off, “and for the daytime activities: there’s art, swimming, archery, ice cream making, and then flashlight hide n’ seek and stargazing—which are both at night.”

“Sweet! I’ll have to sign up for table tennis.” Kaito grabbed a pencil and wrote his name down on the sign up board. “And I’ll do stargazing of course!” 

“I don’t really want to do a competition this year, but I think that tomorrow I’ll do ice cream making and archery. I’ve always wanted to shoot with a bow and arrow!” Kaede decided.

“I-I guess I’ll do the same. I’m not very good at art and I don’t really feel like swimming when the pool’s really crowded.”

“Hey why don’t we do capture the flag, too? It doesn’t get in the way of anything else we wanna do,” Kaito suggested.

“I’m down.” Maki crossed her arms and leaned against the wall. “I think I’ll do archery, too. It’ll be nice to get some practice in.”

“Awesome, capture the flag it is. What team should we be on?” 

I pondered that for a moment. I looked at the team list. It seemed a few people had signed up already. 

“How about blue? I’ve always done well on blue teams,” Kaede recalled.

“Blue it is.”

Kaito wrote down all four of our names under the “TEAM BLUE” sign up. 

“Alright, is that all?”

Kaede raised her hand a bit, “We should do flashlight hide n’ seek. It might get in the way of stargazing, but it’s only one night.”

Kaito looked a bit disappointed, but he shrugged. “Sure. If you guys wanna do stargazing with me, feel free to join..” 

“I think that’d be fun. I have trouble sleeping, anyway.” I laughed a bit at my own misfortune. Insomnia sucks. 

“Nice! I got my sidekick with me. By the end of this, you’ll know _all_ the stars and planets visible. Man, this is gonna be so cool. Since there’s so little artificial light out here, it’ll be much easier to see them.”

I imagined what the sky would look like. In the suburbs outside the city, there were a good few stars, but they couldn’t hold a candle to how they looked when light pollution was low.

I remembered my first year; when I met Kaito. He begged me to go stargazing with him. We laid on towels in the open meadow. He pointed to the stars, whispering the names of constellations to me, every once in a while he would get too loud and the adult accompanying us would shush us.

Kaito had told me about the time he went camping for the first time. How magical the stars looked as he sat outside wrapped in a blanket. It sparked his curiosity in learning as much as he could about them. I told him I’d never seen stars that bright before. I can still remember what he’d said to me after that. 

“When I go up into space someday, I’ll tell the stars that, and make them shine extra bright for you!” He’d said. 

I had laughed a bit at it. I knew you couldn’t speak to the stars, they were just balls of gas and light and whatever floating in nothingness, which would eventually explode. But when he’d said that, I almost believed it. It seemed amazing. I vowed to myself that when Kaito went to space, I would go somewhere where the light pollution didn’t block out the radiance of the stars. Who knows, maybe they would shine brighter that night. 

“Hey, sidekick! I’m supposed to be the one in space, not you!” I snapped back into reality as a hand waved in front of my face. Damn it, I’d spaced again. 

“Oh, sorry guys. Were you saying something?” 

“I was just telling _him—_ ” Maki pointed her thumb towards Kaito “ _—_ not to make the mere mention of space bore you for the rest of your life.”

“Hey!”

  
“No, no, it’s really okay. I don’t mind at all.” And that would always be true. I never got tired of hearing people talk about their passions. It made it so that I could still participate in the conversation without talking.

“Should we move onto something else, then?” Kaede asked, scanning the group for our responses. 

“It’s kinda stupid, but, maybe we could go down to the playground? I think the hammocks are still there,” I suggested, hoping my input wasn’t rejected.

They all seemed to consider my idea for a bit, nodding and shrugging amongst themselves.

“Alright then, let’s go!” Kaito announced.

* * *

We exited the lodge, making our way to the play structure. Most of it was made of wood, with 2 slides, monkey bars, a bridge, a rock climbing wall, a ramp, a swingset, and the part that the older groups of people there actually cared about: the tire swing. Said tire swing was occupied by none other than Kokichi Ouma, who was whipping around at speeds I didn’t even know were possible, and screaming his head off. 

“Is he okay?” Kaede asked Gonta, who was cheerfully spinning Kokichi around, seemingly unaware of the boy’s high pitched shrieking. 

“Kokichi said he do not get dizzy no matter how fast Gonta spin him,” Gonta explained. In that case, I assumed that was a lie. I decided I was going to the hammocks to lay down, as I didn’t want to get stuck with “hold Kokichi’s hair back as he throws up in a bathroom stall because he thought he could spin faster than he was actually able to” duty, if it came up.

I climbed into the biggest one, which was large and flat (able to fit at most 3 people), and stared up at the sky. It was late afternoon, so the sun was already partially set, covering the camp in shadows from the large pine trees above us. I let myself zone out. Thinking about what the rest of the trip is gonna be like, what I’ve done in the past, what I’ll do when I get home, etc.; just anything to tune out the screaming, which had another voice added to it that I assumed was Kaito’s. 

“Hey.”

I turned my head slightly to the side to see Kaede standing over me. 

“Can I join you?” 

“Uh, sure.”

I scooted over as she climbed next to me. 

We layed in silence under the summer sun, feeling the breeze go by. Perfect.

I decided to close my eyes. Kaito and Kokichi’s screeching had stopped, so I assumed they went on to do other things. It was almost completely quiet, save for our breathing. The hammock swayed side to side peacefully. It felt great. My consciousness began to fade out. Ah, the only time I can fall asleep is when I probably shouldn’t be falling asleep. I couldn’t really stop myself from it, though. I was just too tired from simply existing that I wasn’t able to move. At some point, although I don’t remember when, everything went dark.


End file.
